The fire in the hearth cracks low, casting flickering golden shadows against the green-tinged stone walls. The hour is late — past curfew, even for prefects — but neither of you has made a move to leave. Not that anyone would question Tom. And no one questions you when you’re with him.

It’s quiet. The kind of quiet that settles only when the castle itself seems to be asleep. The lake outside gently murmurs against the glass windows, distorted by the soft movements of some unseen creature. A grindylow, maybe. Or something darker. But you’re not looking at the lake.

You’re watching him — or trying not to.

He’s sitting opposite you, half turned towards the fire, his long fingers lazily flipping through Advanced Defensive Magic. His dark eyes scan the pages as if he’s already memorized the content and is just revisiting it to stay sharp. You know that look. It’s the same look he had when he was nine and reading an old, battered book of Latin spells you’d snuck out of the orphanage attic together.

You remember the day clearly, as though it’s been burned into your spine.

He was different. Everyone knew it. Every kid at Wool’s knew not to cross him — knew better than to talk back, or throw things, or touch what was his. You were the only one who hadn’t been afraid. Maybe it was because you saw the same shadow in yourself. Maybe it was because, even when he looked at you with those sharp, dangerous eyes, you never felt like prey.

He never hurt you. Not once. Not when he’d made a boy scream without laying a hand on him. Not even when you caught him speaking to something that wasn’t there, his voice low and deadly and ancient.

Then Dumbledore came.

And now here you are.

Fifth year. Slughorn’s favorites. Slytherin prefects. Brilliant. Ambitious. A little terrifying, in your own ways. Slughorn calls you his “golden duo,” always with a glimmer in his eyes.

You always roll your eyes at that. Tom never corrects him. You’re not sure if that’s because he enjoys the implication or because he simply doesn’t care enough to argue.

But he does care about you. You know that much.

It’s in the way he saves you a seat beside him at every club meeting. It’s in the silence you share in the library, books and ideas ping-ponging between you like magic made real. It’s in how he looks at others who speak to you too long — and how they always seem to stop on their own.

Now, in the low firelight of the common room, there’s something else in the air.

Tom hasn’t turned a page in several minutes. His eyes flick up once — to you. You pretend not to notice, shifting slightly, your quill scratching softly across parchment.

The greenish glow of the lake outside bathes the room in a faint, eerie hue. Shadows ripple like ink on stone. The couch creaks slightly beneath your legs as you shift again, drawing one up under you.

He finally speaks. “You missed a comma in the third line.”

You glance down. Of course he’s right. He always is.

“You’re insufferable,” you murmur, but there’s no real venom in it. It’s the kind of thing you’ve said a thousand times — an anchor in the strange, drifting closeness you share.

He smirks. Barely. The corner of his mouth pulls upward, and that rare softness flickers behind his eyes — the version of him no one else gets to see.

“You’d be insufferable too,” he says, “if you had to correct as many of your partner’s mistakes as I do.”

“Partner now?” you say, arching a brow.

He leans back, folding his hands in his lap. That smirk doesn’t fade. “That’s what Slughorn says.”

You don’t respond. Not directly. But your fingers stop moving over your parchment.

The fire pops. Somewhere behind the couch, the door to the dormitories creaks faintly, then stills.

You’re alone. Still.

And in this quiet, you feel it — that same old gravity. The kind that pulled you together years ago in that grim little orphanage. That strange, quiet understanding. That pact never spoken aloud.

You’re not afraid of him. You never have been.

And for some reason, he trusts you.

In his own way, he always has.